Bangladesh local poll process begins

Manikganj: Candidates on Thursday applied to run in Bangladesh's local elections due on August 4, the first since the army-backed interim government took over in January last year and a major step ahead of a national vote at year-end.

The government, headed by former central bank governor Fakhruddin Ahmad, has promised to hold a parliamentary election by December, and the local polls are viewed as a test of the country's ability to run an election efficiently and peacefully.

One of 13 locations for the local polls where prospective candidates arrived at the election office was Manikganj. "I left most of my supporters behind because of restrictions on too much election fanfare under emergency power rules," said Morsheda Hossain, at Manikganj, 65km northwest of the capital Dhaka.

She belongs to the Awami League led by paroled former prime minister Shaikh Hasina.

Black money

"I have decided to participate in the election after getting the consent of my party. Since the interim authority is neutral, I hope this election will be free from black money and thugs," she said. Though the authorities have relaxed emergency restrictions on campaign rallies in areas where the local elections will be held, political parties want the emergency lifted fully before the parliamentary poll.

Candidates for the local elections are not directly drawn from political parties but are normally local elites and popular figures. Bangladesh election laws ban political parties from directly contesting local polls.

Though local polls do not directly pick candidates for the national election, local candidates play a key role in the selection of candidates for the national elections because of their strong local bases of support. The two main national parties - The Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) - hold opposing views on the local election.

While the Awami League allows its leaders and activists to contest the election, the BNP, headed by former prime minister Begum Khalida Zia, has said it would boycott the local poll if it was held ahead of the parliamentary vote.

The BNP has also maintained it would not participate unless Khalida and her two ailing sons in jail were unconditionally freed. The trio were detained last year along with hundreds of other key political figures, including Hasina, for alleged corruption.